Snowden plays pawn for Putin

Coming off of his cameo appearance in Russian President Valdimir Putin's recently televised news conference, Edward Snowden's biggest problem is not how U.S. government officials view him. It is how he sees himself.

The fugitive whistle-blower became a hero to some for exposing the National Security Agency's espionage against this nation's foreign enemies and friends, as well as millions of Americans. Now Snowden claims his staged involvement was meant to hold Russia accountable for its surveillance programs.

Snowden's biggest supporters believe that he has done this country a great service and want the Obama administration to afford him the protections of a whistle-blower. His detractors say he is a traitor who has revealed some of this nation's most deeply held secrets and compromised the NSA's ability to snoop on America's enemies. They want him tried and imprisoned.

Snowden's guest spot

Against this backdrop Snowden, who fled to Russia to dodge an international arrest warrant, turned up in a prerecorded video to ask a softball question of Putin. Saying he had seen "little discussion of Russia's own involvement in the policies of mass surveillance," Snowden asked "does Russia intercept, store or analyze, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?"

Putin answered him in the same reassuring tone that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin used back in 1945 when he promised the world that he would allow Poland, which was then occupied by Russian troops, to hold free elections. He never did.

Too bad Snowden didn't get to follow up. He could have asked the Russian leader whether his government had a court's permission when, as widely believed, it intercepted a telephone conversation between two U.S. diplomats talking candidly about Ukraine and then posted it on the Internet. That was the first of several conversations Russia is alleged to have tapped into and then widely revealed.

Exposing Russia?

Snowden said he agreed to put the question to Putin because he believed he could be as revealing of Russia's expansive electronic spying as he has been of U.S. abuses. Snowden thinks too highly of himself.

In the U.S., he is a wanted man whose blip on the government's radar has, no doubt, been enhanced by his new role as a Putin pawn. "Mr. Snowden has been accused of leaking classified information, and he faces felony charges. â?1/8 He should be returned to the United States as soon as possible, where he will be accorded full due process in our system," Kevin Lewis, the Department of Justice spokesperson, told me.

Realizing the harm his stint on Putin's televised news conference has done, some of Snowden supporters now say he regrets taking part in it.

But as a matter of optics, his decision to masquerade as a journalist and put a weak question to the Russian leader has caused lasting damage that his surrogates cannot repair.

As someone who had the courage to question this country's unchecked intelligence gathering policies, Snowden was surprisingly myopic in his understanding of the harm his role in Putin's televised sideshow will do to his prospects of ever leaving Russia a free man.

DeWayne Wickham, dean of Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication, writes for USA Today.

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Snowden plays pawn for Putin

Coming off of his cameo appearance in Russian President Valdimir Putin's recently televised news conference, Edward Snowden's biggest problem is not how U.S. government officials view him. It is how